JOHN BUNYAN. No one knows, till he has tried, how hard it is to give a reason for his love. Admiration is of the understanding, and may be readily analysed: love is of the heart, and rebels against it. I have felt this over and over again while preparing this lecture. I have known so well why I admire Mr. Tennyson. I have found it so hard to say why I love John Bunyan; for I do love him from the bottom of my heart. This friend of one's childhood,—to deliver a lecture on him has seemed to me almost like delivering a lecture on one's mother. Yet the subject is large, and might be treated in many ways; for I might take for my text his imprisonment in Bedford gaol, and deliver myself on toleration and religious liberty. Or I might give you a political essay on John Bunyan's times, or a theological essay on his works. But I propose leaving all these, to speak to you about his genius, and chiefly as it is shown in that immortal work so inseparably connected with his name, "The Pilgrim's Progress." I shall only refer to his times and his history, in so far as I believe we may trace their influence on his genius. But of his personal feelings, and above all, his early religious feelings, I must say much, and perhaps more than you might expect to hear in one of these lectures not professedly religious; for I see more and more that it is impossible to understand John Bunyan's genius, and least of all the Pilgrim's Progress, without entering into his own personal religious history. But before I begin the subject of my lecture, let me say a word about his imprisonment in Bedford gaol. This, however, has less to do with one's idea of John Bunyan, than people have been used to imagine; for it has been proved satisfactorily, to my own mind at least, that the Pilgrim's Progress was not written there, nor for many years after his liberation,— not in prison, but in his own cottage at Elstow. Yet imprisoned he was, and for conscience' sake, and on the ground of his refusing to conform to the Church of England, for he was, as you know, a preacher among the Baptists. I must say a few words on this subject, because it has shocked and grieved me to see even so good a man as Southey attempting to excuse and even defend that imprisonment. God forbid that I should do anything of the sort. I have no doubt that it was a great error and a great sin. And as I trust that there is no Dissenter of the present day who would justify the victorious Puritans in their forbidding, as they did under pains and penalties, even the private use of our Prayer-Book; so most surely am not I inclined to defend the conduct of the Church of England towards her opposers, when she again established her authority. Our Church was, as all other Churches were at that time, intolerant and persecuting. Let us own it freely, and thank God for the change. John Bunyan, the Baptist preacher, is now, we understand, to have his niche and his monument along with our Church of England worthies, all the good and all the great, in one of the Courts of our new Houses of Parliament,—a happy omen, we trust, of "a good time coming," a time of religious as well as political peace. And now let me turn to the real subject of my lecture,the immortal allegory and its Author, the prince of Allegorists, as he has been called; and truly, for he was a born Allegorist, Without first lived the allegory which afterwards he wrote. entering minutely into the subject, I suppose by a religious allegory we mean spiritual truth conveyed under figures and symbols, under something addressed to one of the senses. And if this be a correct definition, then I say that John Bunyan's early religious life was an allegory, for he saw, and heard, and felt spiritual things as literally as his Christian in the Pilgrim's Progress. We have his autobiography, entitled "Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners," a book written in prison, several years before the Pilgrim's Progress, and not known half so well as it deserves to be; for in point of truest poetical spirit it is, as I think, only to be compared to the autobiography of another great genius-"The Confessions of Augustine." In other respects, no doubt, it is inferior, but in point of imagination and passion, "thoughts that breathe and words that burn," quite superior to the Pilgrim's Progress itself. I shall quote from it, because I believe you all know the Pilgrim's Progress, and very few of you, possibly, know the life and the man familiarly. Any one who reads that autobiography will see that in his own personal experience John Bunyan constantly confounded the inward with the outward. Every mental perception was with him changed at once into a bodily sensation. It pressed upon his shoulders, sounded in his ears, appeared as a vision before his eyes. He seldom believed; he always felt, and heard, and saw. I will give you some instances to show what I mean. Describing how the "burden" of his Pilgrim pressed on himself, he says, in his own most picturesque and poetical language, "I was as if the strength of my body had been taken away by the power thereof, and often when I was walking was ready to sink with the burden of it. Even crushed to the ground therewith, I saw it, I felt it, I was broken to pieces by it. I could for days together feel my body to shake and totter by reason of this my terror, and |